Course Information
CS162 Spring 2010

Course Staff:

Instructor:

Ion Stoica, Associate Professor
465 Soda Hall, 643-4007.  Email: istoica AT cs.berkeley.edu
Office Hours: TT 2:00-3:00, 449 Soda Hall

Teaching Assistants:

Matei Zaharia
Email: X at inst.eecs.berkeley.edu, where X = cs162-ta
Office Hours: Wed 11:00a-12:00p, Room: 711 Soda (alcove)

Andy Konwinski
Email: Y at inst.eecs.berkeley.edu, where Y = cs162-tb
Office Hours: Tue 1:00p-2:00p, Room: 711 Soda (alcove)

Benjamin Hindman
Email: Z at inst.eecs.berkeley.edu, where Z = cs162-tc
Office Hours: Wed 4:00p-5:00p, Room: 711 Soda (alcove)



Lecture and Discussion Times:

Lecture:


Discussion Sections and Labs: 

Course Communication:

You can email the staff at cs162 AT eecs.berkeley.edu. The newsgroup ucb.class.cs162 will be used extensively to communicate information on the course and labs.You must read it regularly.

Course Reading Materials:

Course Reader:

To reduce the printing load on department printers, the course reader is mandatory. Copies are currently available from Copy Central on Hearst Ave.

Textbooks:

Course Grading:

The EECS Division guideline for an upper division EECS class is that the overall class GPA should be between 2.7 and 3.1. (See policy for undergradute courses.) Thus, the average gradein this class will be a B or B+. Please set your expectations accordingly.

We grade on a curve rather than on an absolute scale because it protects students from stressing out if we happen to give an overly hard exam. Graduate students and reentry students are not included in establishing the curve (to be fairer to undergraduates), but they will receive grades based on where they would fall on the curve.  The downside of grading on a curve is that it tends to lead students to think they are competing against each other; in practice, this is mistaken belief in a class this large. We're told told that in past years, the absolute difference between each half-step grade (between a B+ and an A-, for example), has been roughly 5%, while the largest impact any individual student's performance is likely to have on your grade is less than 0.1%... in other words, well into the noise.

Projects: There will be four projects. Each project consists of a design document and solution code. The document will be worth 40% of the project grade, and the code will be worth the other 60%.

Exams: There will be one midterm exam and one final exam. If you have a conflict, let us know, and we will schedule a makeup for the day before the exam is given to the rest of the class. All exams will be closed book, and will cover material from lecture, sections, the readings, and the project. In particular, you are likely to do poorly on the exams and in the course if you do not do your share of the work on the project.

Rough Breakdown of Points: